USB-serial screen program

The screen terminal multiplexer program is useful for connecting to serial port devices.

Install screen by:

apt install screen
# or
brew install screen

On Linux / WSL, add the username to “dialout” group:

adduser $(whoami) dialout

A serial port connection is established at 115200 baud like:

screen /dev/ttyUSB0 115200

List the USB-serial adapter ports:

  • Linux: ls /dev/ttyUSB*
  • macOS: ls /dev/tty.usbserial*

Alternative: minicom is a serial terminal program with file transfer capability.